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Monday, 20 December 2010

For the last 9 months I have been a part-time entrepreneur. From 1st January it'll be full-time.

I have now worked at the same software company for 10 years. I started as a developer and worked my way up to become the Development Director. Over the past 2 years I have transformed the company's development department with changes that will continue to help it deliver working software long after my departure. I moved us from a classic waterfall model, with manual deployment, to an Agile process (Scrum) incorporating SOLID principles, unit tests, continuous integration & build servers and, nearly, fully automated deployment of a dozen commercial websites. I am very proud of the changes I have made and I leave a company which now scores 9/12 on the Joel Test.

I'm giving all that up.

My own, personal, transformation didn't stop there though. Over the last year I have become more and more excited by the business side of software development. I spent countless evenings and weekends consuming all I could find from such luminaries as Dharmesh Shah, Seth Godin, Geoffrey A. Moore, Eric Ries etc. The possibility that a 'simple developer' could expand his horizons and create something more than just an application was exhilarating. During 2010 I had, and still have, a hat-full of ideas; one of which bubbled to the top of the stack quite effortlessly. After the creation of an MVP, a few public demos & pitches and some incredible user feedback I'm now ready to go for it. I've learnt all I can without taking that final step off the cliff.

In 2011 I'll be looking for more people to come join me in helping change the way people interact with social media - starting with TweetPivot. If you want to know what that involves you'll have to follow me on twitter or even just come talk with me!

Finally, I'd like to thank some local groups (e.g. Pitch and Mix), some global groups (e.g. Microsoft's BizSpark program) and an innumerable number of individuals who have supported and encouraged me thus far. Almost any hour of the day can feel like a lonely 3am when you're an entrepreneur and having people that can help you refocus is priceless.